Double D Vape

To hear me drink scotch, tell this story, and weep, click the link.

Today is the anniversary of my father’s death, and I’m reflecting back to the maelstrom of that time. It is said that birth, life, and death form a circle, an infinity, unceasing. I never found myself in such a small circle until the end of my father’s life and my attempt to create new life occurred at the same time. It was messy, overlapping, joyous, painful, the canvas of a carnival tent, a homemade patchwork.

My father had a first episode six months or so before he died: he had a pain in his stomach so severe he had to be medevacked (well, driven really) from my parents lake house in Massachusetts to a hospital close to home in New York. At that time I didn’t know it was the beginning of the end, but it was. We kept saying he’d get back up to the lake house to put his feet in the water, but he never did.

What I try to remember: the delights of that time of trying to fix the unfixable, the last moments of joy.

What I try to forget: the increasing realization that it was the end.

There was an in between that feels like it occurred out of time, the liminal space between life and death (I love the word liminal!) where the most fascinating patchwork occurred. I mentioned a man in my first substack, Three Times the Charm, the one who took my virginity for the third time. The origin of he and I occurred a year or so before my father’s death, when I was 41 and trying to get pregnant. I told this guy I’d just started seeing that I wanted a child and that since he didn’t, I didn’t see much future for us which was when he said, “I’ll do it. I’ll get you pregnant.” And for a time I realized how lovely it was to have my sperm donor on speed dial. Speed dial is a thing of the past, yes. So was this particular moment in the world of fertility. But more about that another time.

And he did get me pregnant once, or at least once that I knew of. It was after my father’s death, and very short lived, possibly compromised by a very physical snorkeling/biking/hiking trip to Hawaii where a best friend and I wept together into the ocean about all our lost loves.

But that was after my father died. Beforehand was when the carnival of life was really at its peak. At some point I started taking follicle stimulators which simultaneously turned me on and (I later learned) thinned the lining of my vagina. And that’s when this guy was trying to get me pregnant using an epic dick. Kind of like Thor’s hammer. And I kept wondering what was wrong with me, if it was yeast infections or what. Amazingly no one told me the effect of the fertility meds, though that might’ve been nice. It always astounds me how little healthcare professionals actually know.

Me, around when all this happened. At around 41 or 42.

The cell phone pic is the cover from my first book, Game On.

I went to a urologist at one point and said “is my boyfriend’s dick too big for me?” I remember the look on the doctor’s face, the hint of a smile on her lips. “No,” she said. “You realize that area is meant to expand to bear a child. Believe me it’s not too big.”

To relax, I’d take a Xanax and a shot of bourbon before he came over. Then two shots. Then a friend of mine suggested a vape. Which was fascinating timing, as my father had just been prescribed medical marijuana and also needed a vape. This friend of mine, Herb, who I knew from the Shakespeare festival, agreed to go with me to a place on St. Marks to get one. Keep in mind this is before it was legal here in NY, and it was all just a bit trickier than it is now. So we went on this day trip together to buy a vape so I could get my boyfriend’s dick inside me. And also to bring some pain relief to my father.

Herb, an Irish boy, was fascinated by the specifics of my boyfriend’s extra large package. “You know,” Herb said wryly. “I’m not of the larger variety. What’s it like?”

“Hm.” I thought for a minute. “Well, it feels a bit like going to Lincoln Center. No matter how many times I see it, it always takes my breath away.”

Herb, laughing, referred to him from then on as “Linc”.

Linc, meanwhile, called himself by a different nickname. When we first met, in the spring of 2016, we took a walk in Central Park, then made out by the pond. In a moment of passion (using what I call his Brooklyn Voice) he said, “I’m going to make you scream Jesús and call me Papi!” Thus I’ve called him Papi ever since. I wrote an essay about all this that I have yet to publish called “Find Daddy” and I wrote the following after referring to my brother as Dad several times by mistake.

“When your father is dying, and you call your brother Dad and your lover Papi, 
that’s when you know you are well and truly fucked.”

I got the vape for me and Linc and it worked. I used it for a bit until my father filled his prescription. Then I gave the vape to my father, and that worked for him too, for a minute. And when it stopped working, I got it back.

Snails is one of my best friends from childhood, and one of the reasons I am a writer. She herself is a brilliant writer and performer and has a childlike voice. I was at the hospital with my father one day when I left his room to talk to her on the phone, and update her on all the vape stuff. “Wait wait wait Gebbe. Do you mean that Dick Vape is also Dad Vape?”

I laughed aloud as I realized the truth. Yes, Dick Vape was also Dad Vape. Yes, I had a Double D Vape.

Birth

          Life

                    Death

Too close together. This was a lesson I recall from grad school: these three are inseparable. But this was too close.

There’s so much more to all of these stories. But I like living in this moment: My father is still alive. I see him in the hospital, then I drive home to meet Linc. I’m ovulating, and there’s a chance. And somewhere between the death of my father and the birth of a child there is...

So...

          Much...

                         Life.

Me around 18. With my dad.